Platform

• China heeft op 12 mei 2026 officieel een wereldwijd onderwijsplatform voor kunstmatige intelligentie gelanceerd om de internationale toegang tot digitale leermiddelen te verbreden. • Het platform integreert AI-gestuurde tools voor gepersonaliseerd leren, meertalige contentlevering en interactieve modules die meer dan 100 talen ondersteunen. • Dit initiatief versterkt de soft power van China op het gebied van educatietechnologie te midden van toenemende wereldwijde concurrentie in AI-toepassingen voor de markten in Zuidoost- en Oost-Azië.

• Charms Interactive, Inc. kondigde de lancering van Charms.ai aan en sloot een pre-seed financieringsronde van 1,5 miljoen dollar af om de economie voor AI-karakters op te bouwen. • De financiering ondersteunt de ontwikkeling van een AI-gestuurd platform dat interactieve ecosystemen voor AI-karakters mogelijk maakt voor diverse toepassingen. • Deze investering onderstreept de groeiende interesse in AI-personalisatietechnologieën te midden van de bredere groei van de AI-industrie.

• Hack van online learningsysteem veroorzaakte vorige week chaos voor studenten en faculteiten, waardoor sommige eindexamens werden vertraagd • Het bedrijf dat het online learningsysteem Canvas exploiteert, meldde dat het een overeenkomst heeft gesloten met hackers om de gegevens te verwijderen die zij hadden gestolen tijdens een cyberaanval die chaos veroorzaakte voor studenten, van wie velen midden in hun eindexamens zaten. • Instructure, het moederbedrijf van Canvas, liet in een online bericht weten dat het "een overeenkomst heeft bereikt met de ongeautoriseerde actor die bij dit incident betrokken was".

• Anecdotes, een enterprise governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform aangedreven door agentic AI, is door toonaangevende cybersecurity-analisten erkend als een Rising in Cyber 2026-honoree. • Het platform maakt gebruik van autonome AI-agents om beveiligingsoperaties binnen ondernemingen te transformeren en compliance-workflows in organisaties te stroomlijnen. • De erkenning weerspiegelt de groeiende markttrend waarbij agentic AI de cybersecurity en het risicobeheer van ondernemingen hervormt, waarbij AI-agents nu centraal staan in moderne beveiligingsoperaties.

• De in Rotterdam gevestigde healthcare AI-startup Ditto heeft €7,6 miljoen aan financiering veiliggesteld onder leiding van Heal Capital om haar op AI gebaseerde applicatie voor patiëntencommunicatie uit te breiden naar Europese markten. • Het platform maakt gebruik van AI om interacties met patiënten te automatiseren en te personaliseren, waardoor de efficiëntie van de zorgcommunicatie en de patiëntbetrokkenheid voor zorgverleners worden verbeterd. • De financiering toont het vertrouwen van investeerders in AI-oplossingen voor zorgadministratie en patiëntenbeheer, een groeiend segment binnen de zorgtechnologie.

• Quiq Inc. lanceerde op 11 mei 2026 een nieuw spraakgestuurd AI-agentplatform, waarmee de conversationele AI wordt uitgebreid buiten tekst voor implementaties in ondernemingen. • De update is gericht op het opschalen van de klantenservice voorbij de pilotfasen, door spraakmogelijkheden te integreren om complexe interacties natuurlijker af te handelen. • Terwijl ondernemingen de adoptie van AI versnellen, positioneert de stap van Quiq het bedrijf om in te spelen op de vraag naar multimodale AI in supportoperaties met een hoog volume, ondersteund door een vernieuwde branding die de nadruk legt op betrouwbaarheid.

Previously prohibited use of websites such as Omoggle that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed now allowed Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on. Continue reading...

• India’s National Cyber Security Coordinator’s Office launched CyberMatrix AI on May 6, 2026, the country’s first integrated AI‑driven cyberthreat‑intelligence platform linking federal agencies, critical‑infrastructure operators, and private‑sector CERTs. • The platform processes over 1.2 billion network events daily, applying graph‑based anomaly detection and LLM‑fused TTP analysis to generate automatic incident‑response playbooks tailored to telecom, power utilities, and financial‑services networks. • Early metrics indicate a 38% reduction in mean‑time‑to‑detection across pilot sectors during a 90‑day trial, with the government aiming to extend coverage to all 140 regulated critical‑infrastructure entities by mid‑2027.

• Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs issued a new regulation on May 8, 2026, requiring all large foreign tech platforms to host at least 60% of their AI models serving Indonesian users within the country by end‑2027. • The rule, framed as a national‑security and data‑sovereignty measure, targets companies including Meta, Google, and major Chinese AI firms, mandating local data‑center partnerships and annual compliance audits conducted by the Indonesia Data Center Association. • Jakarta estimates the mandate could attract $4–6 billion in data‑center investment over five years while enforcing stricter content‑moderation standards for localized models.

• Syfe, a regional investment platform, announced it has reached $10 billion in assets under management, marking significant growth in the Asia-Pacific investment sector as of May 2026. • The platform reported a threefold increase in trading activity, driven by investors shifting away from US-only portfolios to explore broader geographic exposure and diversified investment strategies. • The milestone reflects growing investor appetite for digital wealth management solutions in Asia and indicates expanding confidence in regional investment opportunities beyond traditional US-focused strategies.

• Cogent Security, a vulnerability management developer, secured $42 million in Series A funding in February 2026 at a post-money valuation of $295 million. • Bain Capital Ventures led the round with participation from OpenAI, Datadog, and existing investor Greylock Partners, bringing the company's total capital raised to $53 million since its seed round. • The investment reflects growing enterprise demand for AI-powered vulnerability management tools as organizations prioritize cybersecurity infrastructure upgrades.

• Zoven AI unveiled an AI-native platform designed to empower fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) teams with automated investigation capabilities. • The platform uses AI agents that understand existing fraud playbooks and investigate alerts automatically, enabling teams to regain control over compliance operations. • The solution addresses the growing need for efficient fraud detection in financial services, where manual review processes become increasingly inadequate at scale.

Reform UK is ‘doing something right when it comes to visibility’ on multiple AI systems, say researchersAI platforms are more likely to reference Nigel Farage than any other UK leader when prompted about British politics, according to an AI search analytics firm.“We are confident in saying that Reform are showing up significantly more than you would expect,” said Malte Landwehr, an expert at Peec AI, the firm that did the research. “So they’re doing something right when it comes to LLM [large language model] visibility.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: A Senate committee considering the illegal tobacco trade in Australia hears closed-session evidence from cigarette manufacturersGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAnti-smoking campaigners have accused the Coalition of secretly giving tobacco giants access to a parliamentary inquiry, a move they say undermines more than 15 years of precedent to protect public health.On Monday, representatives from tobacco company Philip Morris appeared before a Senate committee considering the illegal tobacco trade in Australia. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Union body finds workers describing themselves as ‘gambling’ because wages felt like the outcome of chance rather than workThe practice of using “dynamic pricing” to set pay on gig economy platforms including Uber should be banned because it leaves workers at the mercy of shadowy algorithms with no certainty over their earnings, trade union leaders have urged.In a report exposing the human cost of the gig economy practice, the Trades Union Congress said pay was becoming decoupled from time, skill or effort. Instead, work had become a speculative practice with the rewards determined by an algorithmic process with little transparency. Continue reading...

• Aviatrix Inc. announced the launch of a new platform designed to contain artificial intelligence agents and enforce security controls across AI workloads without requiring changes to AI agents or code. • The platform extends Aviatrix's Cloud Native Security Fabric with two new products: Zero Trust for AI Workloads (now generally available) and Aviatrix AgentGuard (in early access), enabling IT teams to set policies that allow or deny access to external AI services and block shadow AI with allowlists. • The solution provides network-layer enforcement across workloads and regions, addressing the growing need to secure AI agents, large language model proxies, and agentic frameworks in enterprise environments.

• The Pentagon launched GenAI.mil in December 2025 as part of Project Maven, providing secure generative AI access to approximately 3 million Department of Defense staff members. • The platform embeds multiple leading AI models including Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, xAI's Grok, and OpenAI's ChatGPT, enabling widespread AI adoption across military operations. • The initiative reflects the U.S. military's strategic priority to integrate advanced AI capabilities into defense operations and demonstrates significant government investment in dual-use AI technology.

• Sevii announced the launch of its Autonomous Cyber Swarm Defense (CSD) capability on April 28, 2026, to counter high-volume AI-driven cyber attacks at machine speed and scale. • The ADR platform deploys Agentic AI Cyber Warrior agents that detect, contain, and remediate threats in under 15 minutes, reducing analyst workloads by 95% with a fixed per-asset pricing model eliminating AI token costs. • CSD Mode features Myrmidon Defense Technology (MDT) for efficient micro-orchestration, enabling predictable budgeting without additional hires or outsourcing, as noted by Synergem Technologies CEO Frank Holt.

European Commission says tech company does not have effective measures to keep under-13s off Facebook and InstagramThe tech company Meta has been found to be in breach of EU law for failing to prevent children under 13 from using its Facebook and Instagram platforms.Issuing the preliminary findings of a nearly two-year investigation, the European Commission said on Wednesday that Meta did not have effective measures in place to stop under-13s accessing its services. Continue reading...

• Google's AI agent platform is taking the lead as enterprises transition from question-answering and content generation AI to systems that execute tasks and actions autonomously. • The platform enables practical AI applications in business workflows, accelerating adoption. • This positions Google dominantly in the US enterprise AI market, driving productivity gains and influencing competitive developments.

• Copperhelm raised $7 million in funding to launch an agentic cloud security platform leveraging AI agents for threat detection. • The platform automates real-time remediation at scale, addressing escalating cloud vulnerabilities in US enterprises. • This funding enables Copperhelm to commercialize innovative AI-driven cybersecurity amid rising breach incidents.

• AcuityMD announced $80 million in new funding to advance its platform with sophisticated AI features for medical device insights. • The investment accelerates AI integration to improve market intelligence for US healthcare and medtech firms. • This capital infusion positions AcuityMD to dominate AI-powered analytics in the growing $500B+ medical device sector.

2Apply’s over-collection of personal information adds to the power of the real estate industry in the competitive rental market, Carly Kind saysFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAn online rental platform has been urged to stop collecting users’ personal information after the Australian privacy commissioner found the gathering of “excessive” data compounded the vulnerability of tenants amid the housing crisis.RentTech platforms are increasingly used by real estate agents in Australia for people applying for rental properties to submit applications and supporting documentation. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has identified 57 different rent platforms operating in Australia. Continue reading...

UK representatives from Meta, Roblox and TikTok also tell MPs they believe under-16 ban would be ‘unenforceable’Executives from three social media companies have denied their platforms are inherently addictive to children and young people in a combative appearance before MPs in Westminster.Representatives from Meta, Roblox and TikTok faced robust questioning from the cross-party education select committee about the impact of screen time and social media on children. Continue reading...

Drivers booted off the platform say they have little recourse to appeal as rideshare giant increasingly relies on automated systemsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastMichael Thorn thought he’d suffered enough after his Uber passenger punched him in the head, sending him to hospital. But then the ride-share platform deactivated his account.“It’s even worse than getting belted,” Thorn said. Continue reading...

Bets placed on Middle East conflict has led to US firm experiencing big increase in volumePolymarket, the online prediction platform that hosts bets on events such as the Iran war, is in talks to raise $400m (£296m) at a valuation of up to $15bn.The company has gained notoriety in recent months over wagers placed on the Middle East conflict, including on the timing of US-Israel strikes against Iran, and on a US-Iran ceasefire, some of which appeared to bear signs of insider trading. Continue reading...

• Scale AI raised $2.5 billion in fresh funding on April 19, 2026, at a $15 billion valuation, backed by Meta and Tiger Global. • Capital expands US data annotation workforce to 50,000, focusing on synthetic data for autonomous vehicles and LLMs. • Funding counters labor-intensive bottlenecks in AI training, vital for US competitiveness.

• Databricks announced a Series H funding round of $10 billion at a $43 billion valuation on April 18, led by existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, to accelerate development of its AI and data platform. • The funding will support expansion of Databricks' lakehouse architecture, which integrates data warehousing and data lakes, and fund aggressive hiring in engineering and sales across North America. • The round positions Databricks as one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies and signals strong investor confidence in the competitive data infrastructure market dominated by Snowflake and others.